Macs I have known

It was coming - we all knew that. It was just a matter of when. But knowing someone is terminally ill doesn't really lessen the impact when the end comes, not even when one has been with the person almost to the end. So it was, I think, with the death of Steve Jobs. And though my only connection with the man was the tenuous one of knowing that my #1 son had interviewed him once, I have been using Macs more or less from the start.

In the latter half of the 1980s, the teacher who had started the latest incarnation of the Dunoon Grammar School magazine left for another post, and the then pupil editor, one Neil McIntosh, decided it would be efficient if I were to take over from him. After all, I could check copy accurately, and I had a car - as well as being sufficiently malleable to run down the road in said car to retrieve any important kit forgotten by the editor. At that time the school had two Apple Macs sitting in the maths classroom that was the hub of computing in the school, and as I took over the pupil editorial team had decided they would start in-house publication of the Pupils' View instead of taking copy down to the local paper. Somehow they learned/taught themselves how to use Macs instead of the BBCs that had previously reigned, and the empire was born.

As these machines were, in theory, portable, and had custom-made carry-bags to facilitate carriage, we tended to have one home at the weekends, and gradually I became familiar with a mouse and such things as hypercard. When #1 son left school and started on a journalism course, he acquired his own - by now a Mac 2 Classic - which we still have, in its box, in our loft. Later, we substituted a Mac LC for the Amstrad we had at home and the ZX Spectrum on which the budding journo had started at the age of 10, and in the fullness of time connected it to the Internet.

The Pupils' View eventually made enough money to purchase its own computer, and a shiny blue bubble of an iMac appeared in my classroom. So desirable was it that we chained it to the desk with steel cables, and life was never quite the same again. I learned to use Adobe Pagemaker, and was able to teach other non-geeky types - literary, but non-geeky - to use it. The empire grew, as did the collection of Mac Classics, discarded by Business Studies and the like, along my back wall - still functioning well enough for the juniors to produce copy and my senior students to type their RPRs on.

Currently, we own two iMacs - one each. Still sitting ready but disused in the loft is the LCII. I have a 6 year old laptop that saved my sanity recently when my iMac needed a brain transplant, and I have an iPad. I have used PCs - they were issued to staff for registration in my last years in teaching, and I used a friend's to upload photos and Skype home when I spent a month in New Zealand. I was able to make them do my bidding - but they seemed unfamiliar and clunky and on one occasion I and the owner of the PC were unable to locate a bunch of photos after I'd downloaded them.  I was not impressed, and had not the slightest desire ever to own one.

People much cleverer than I at this sort of thing seem devoted to their PCs and don't like Macs at all. But I have never had to struggle, never even had to use one of #2 son's much sought-after Mac Guides (produced about 1990). I've found that once I'd seen something work on a Mac, I've been able to do it - or even to work it out after a word at a Teach Meet or whatever. Nowadays, I don't know how I could live as I do without the communication I enjoy with people all over the world. I'd be an increasingly grouchy pensioner stuck in Dunoon with an increasingly useless passenger ferry unable to cope with travel three seasons out of four. (Don't say a word).

So, for my life as it is, I have one person to thank. That person is Steve Jobs.

Marriage made in Macs?

'Tis done. I am not quite a bride - it's been a while - but if you look a the pic you'll see a sort of marriage going on, as my new iMac talks to my four-year-old laptop. Actually, it's more a case of the new machine apparently hoovering all the info out of the old one while leaving it behind at the same time. Nothing short of miraculous, if you ask me - which is why, presumably, only the very ignorant or very credulous would ever ask me anything about computers.

Anyway, I'm now using the new Mac, and very speedy it is too - except when my wireless signal appears to fail, as it has done a couple of times this evening. Don't know if this is a hiccup in the Airport or at this end, but time will doubtless tell. I love the big shiny screen, which allows me to see what I've got open far more readily than the small screen; I love its brightness and its wonderful colour rendition. And the keyboard is a joy - the low-profile click of the laptop with the ergonomically more pleasing position on the desk which I am now sitting higher above. Whatever is doing it, my typing speed seems to have improved already.

I still have some moving around to do - the desk is tidier than it has been in years, and I had to clean the dust of ages to allow the mouse to function (still getting used to the mouse, BTW). I can't see one of the pictures above my desk and will have to move it up the wall. But I'm a happy bunny nonetheless. Cheers!

Fussy macs?

Another interesting wee glitch involving Mac apps. My pal Di and I write church reports for the local paper. Because we try to make them different from the average church report, we tend to concoct them on one of our wet walks or while recovering from same over a cuppa. She then mails them as an attachment to my Powerbook for me to forward to the paper. All very straightforward.

Well no, actually. Di uses Mail on her mac powerbook; I gave that up after the demise of my relationship with Demon and now use Googlemail on Firefox. But if I try to open the file - which I know fine well began life as a Word file - it appears as a Quicktime movie which then can't be opened. However, if I open the mail in Safari (and you'll recall I don't do this right now 'cos I can only write lower-case mails on Safari) it opens nae bother.

So, for all my friendly geeks out there: does mac only speak to mac these days?

Transplant surgery

At last I've gathered up the will power to install the new Mac OSX - Leopard, or whatever feline it's named for. I must say it seems to have bucked up my aging laptop no end - all working very fast at the moment, and looking strangely shiny and clear-eyed. I'm somewhat disappointed to find that iPhoto seems to be just the same as before; I was looking for the features of the new version as found in iLife. Do you only get that if you buy a new machine?

And I've returned for the moment to Safari rather than Firefox; when I last used the former there were no useful features in my Blogger posting window, and now they're all there. It seems very speedy - is this generally accepted these days?

Anyway, to anyone who has upgraded in this way, I'm open to all suggestions as to how to enjoy this to the full - until the G4 has a fatal heart attack and gives me an excuse to buy a replacement!

Apple Heaven

Apple Heaven 2
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Paid a quick visit to the new Apple mecca in Glasgow today - after walking past it not once but twice! Somehow we failed to notice the big white apple above the doorway. Perhaps it was because in this magnificent building the portico itself is so imposing that the apple seemed merely an addition, perhaps merely because we were blethering - well, what do you expect?

Anyway, it's a lovely space, and this is a much better use for it than the previous occupancy - all candles and kitsch tat. It was delightfully peaceful - more black T-shirts than customers - although I was told that last night it was full of screaming girls and a live band. I had a poke round what is promised for the new OS (coming in October) and told a T shirt I'd be back for it.

And I will.

New York, New York ...

New York.

Wow. Almost too iconic to take in; almost too familiar to believe. Three days spent feeling I’m in a movie, but aware because of the acute cold that this is for real. I see filming happening – indeed, we are moved on at the Rockefeller Centre because we mustn’t get in the way, and have to slither round to another entrance in the snow which has resisted the clean-up – an impressive operation which seems to continue long into the night, the huge piles of snow in the gutter ever harder to negotiate when we cross a road.

We stay in the Waldorf Astoria. The doorman is wearing a long black overcoat, and a fur hat over a fleece balaclava. The bellhop who brings our cases to the room is large and earnest and breaks a lightbulb while making way for our stuff. I ask if it will be possible to make the room any cooler, and he suggests “cracking a window”. We wonder, wildly, if this is his preferred method of ventilation, but discover he merely means to open it. (We do, later, and then have the devil’s own job closing it as an Arctic wind tosses the net curtains around us. In the morning, we see the wee notice begging us not to attempt this feat without help.)

The hotel lobby is opulent, scented by a huge bowl of lilies, and full of business people networking, barking into cellphones or looking hopefully for someone. I throw a waiter into a frenzy by demanding soya milk with my breakfast, but it arrives, and is there for the asking for the rest of our stay. I tell the waiter he’s a star and he smiles sweetly every time we meet. It is so warm that I have to strip the moment we come in the door – and the lifts are so rapid that my ears are in a constant state of trepidation.

I decide I love New York. I take endless (and slightly squint) photos of skyscrapers, and travel the Staten Island ferry before the promised snow arrives. The Statue of Liberty seems strangely small, but arresting nonetheless. Frozen from the ride, we brave the subway once more and emerge unscathed in the wonderful Grand Central Station, where we eat among thousands, sitting up at a bar. I take photos of steam rising from the streets – another iconic phenomenon. We march half the length of Central Park to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art – some well-kent paintings and a display of old musical instruments, among which an Erard grand which features in the book I’m reading (The Piano Tuner, by Daniel Mason).

On our way home we are seduced by the gleaming cube of the Apple Centre on Fifth Avenue, and after Mr B has attacked the door with his head (they shouldn’t clean them so assiduously) I buy a mini GDrive to back up my life. Much cheapness for travelling Brits these days. We eat out that night in a jolly Italian place under the Met Life building, and emerge to the first flakes of snow. We reflect that upstate New York has already vanished under several feet of the stuff, and wonder if we shall ever be able to leave.

And all was for an Apple .......

I sent a letter to Apple today - the final act, I hope, in my latest internet saga. It accompanied the Airport which arrived yesterday to replace the one I have which turned out not to need replaced. I post it here to make me feel better.
Case Number : ********

I am returning the new Airport Base Station which you sent in response to a phone call in the week before Christmas. Please note that this is the new Base Station rather than the one which I have been using for the past two and a half years. It has not even been removed from its packaging. The reasons for this are as follows:

Three weeks ago my printer stopped responding to “print” commands, despite the fact that it was still operating as a printer and had new ink cartridges. As I had neither the time nor the expertise to work out what had gone wrong, I called in a so-called local “expert”. After some time he pronounced that the printer was faulty. However, a new printer fared no better and we managed to return it. At this point I was still connected to the Internet through the Base Station.

Our “expert” now phoned your help line, as I have a Protection Plan. After several hours on the phone, and conversations with, I understand, two of your experts, it was decided that the Airport was faulty and should be replaced. By this time I no longer had any internet connection on my laptop, as the Apple advice had been to change all the settings and these settings were left in such a state that I could make no sense of what had happened. (I should point out that I am not entirely witless in this department, and had set up the entire system myself on purchase.)

And so it was that on the Wednesday before Christmas I was awaiting a replacement Airport, had no internet connection and could not print. The next day my son arrived for a few days and within half an hour had fixed the entire network so that everything was once more working perfectly. Hence the return of the replacement Airport.

Your telephone help in this case turned out to be telephone hindrance, I’m afraid, and left us considerably worse off than we had been. Perhaps the routine questions they ask in this kind of case should be reviewed – or are they on rails like all other call centre operatives?

I should add, perhaps, that I spoke to a very sensible young man at Apple this morning - I suspect that their customer service bods are better than their hapless helpline ones.

Geeks and Goddesses

The Domestic Goddess decided that today merited a premature tasting of the cake iced yesterday, in celebration of the visit of a real computer expert and the subsequent recovery of all we had thought lost: two fully functioning computers, wireless connection to the printer and an apparently hale Airport base station. This wizardry took him all of half an hour, during which he seemed to be attending to his own mails as well. Now we just have to deal with the new Airport which the less-than-expert persuaded Apple we required and which is even now winging its way, fog permitting, to The Blethers. Silly thing is that the Apple Help Desk people seem to have compounded the confusion with their assistance. This is less than comforting when one is less than gifted in the geekery department - from whence cometh mine aid now?

And I suppose the answer is along these lines: why breed experts and then ask someone else? So sorry, chaps - let's just hope there are no more probs for a bit. Right now I feel a tad pathetic - but I can report that the cake tastes brilliant, gritty snow icing and all. So, unlikely a role as it may seem, I'm staying a Domestic Goddess for the foreseeable future.